February 9, 2022 • 43 mins
Art Fraud is an investigative journey through one of the biggest cases of art fraud in US history: The Knoedler Gallery. Written by VANITY FAIR reporter Michael Shnayerson and hosted by Alec Baldwin, ART FRAUD exposes the scandal of dozens of disputed paintings, and over 80 million dollars in profit that led to the stunning collapse of one of the oldest and most revered art galleries in New York City.
The Knoedler Gallery first opened its doors in 1846 in New York City. The gallery sold works of unparalleled quality. But who was Knoedler? And how did the venerable gallery get its start? Listen to Art Fraud on the iHeartRadio App or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Hey, this is John O'Brien, entrepreneur and a fellow
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or wherever you get your podcasts. Just off Madison Avenue
on East seventy third Street for lunchtime. Crowded via quadron
O fills every sidewalk table as well as the seats
in its pandemic inspired shed. It's a cheerful neighborhood joint,
(01:52):
catering to a young crowd with great coffee, sandwiches and pasta.
A sense of triumph pervades the place. Among all the
restaurants closed by COVID nineteen, Via Quadrono is more popular
than ever. Often from a townhouse next door, a stooped
figure emerges from an upper floor and makes her way
(02:14):
down the stately front steps past the millennials. She looks
smaller than she once did, as if scrunched by the
circumstances that led her here, though she still has the
white corkscrew curls that made her stand out in any
art fair or gallery. Opening and the stern, almost imperious
mien for which she was known. A little over a
(02:39):
decade ago, Ann Friedman was among the most powerful art
dealers in New York. Her fiefdom was the Knoedler Gallery,
from which she sold works by many of the best
known artists of the mid twentieth century, Mark Rothko, William Dacooning,
Barnett Newman, Clifford Still, and Jackson Pollock. Today, the Knodler
(03:06):
is gone. Just three blocks down Madison on the north
Side street stand the ghosts of the now infamous gallery.
Two adjoining limestone mansions in the Italian Renaissance style with
ornate stone arches topped by decorative balconies. In the galleries
own Renaissance, a royal blue Awning announced the Ndler's two
(03:30):
buildings in capital letters. In this season of Art Fraud,
we're examining the rise and fall of the Knodler Gallery.
It's a story about one of New York City's oldest
and most celebrated galleries dealing in world class art, and
(03:51):
how its doors would close forever in the face of
insurmountable pressure, ultimately in the form of looming prison to time.
We're talking of course about paintings, fake paintings, or more plainly, forgeries.
The best fakes are still hanging off people's walls. You
know they don't even know or suspect that they're fakes.
(04:15):
Of course, art forgeries only happen because there's money to
be made, a lot of money. Tens of millions of
dollars would change hands between a cast of characters before
it was all over. A few profited, some were cheated,
and at least one person would find themselves behind bars.
(04:37):
With me today is Michael Schneerson, a long time contributing
editor for Vanity Fair, whose feature story on the Knoedler
Gallery appeared in the magazine shortly after the scandal broke
in the spring of two thousand twelve. Michael is also
the author of Boom Mad Money. Mega Dealers and the
Rise of Contemporary Art are compelling and entertaining over view
(05:00):
of the dealers who helped make the contemporary art market
what it is today. The honest dealers, I hasten to add,
because generally these dealers were and are honest, driven by
a passion for their artists far more than profit. Here's
Michael Schneerson. I've written a lot of articles for Vanity Fair,
but the Notlar case sticks in my mind because at
(05:22):
the heart of it lies an unresolved mystery. The story,
of course, has taken some turns that even Anne Friedman
could not have predicted. You could say that about the
whole contemporary art market. I suppose who would have imagined
at the start of the century that an artist named
Jeff Coon's would make a supersized stainless steel rabbit that's
(05:44):
sold at auction in May two th nineteen for million dollars,
the highest price ever paid for a living artist's work.
Who could have predicted that a young Brooklyn artist named
Jean Michel Baskuillade would make his oddly haunting abstract portraits
of tribal figures and totems in a basement for drug money,
only to have them sell after his premature death for
(06:07):
as much as a hundred and ten million dollars. Record
Breaking sales like that have done more than juice the
art market. They've led to a gray market of private
dealings that thrive in a hot climate. It's important to
note that the art market is still the world's largest
unregulated business. Legal business anyway, you have to do what
you say you'll do when striking a deal. You have
(06:27):
to pay your taxes, and that's about it. I remember
going to a mega dealer's home in East Hampton one
night and commenting that the art market was the last
unregulated multibillion dollar equity market in the world. Our host said,
and let's try to keep it that way, as his
guests raised their glasses and toasted. When a dealer goes
(06:51):
further trafficking and paintings that turn out to be fakes,
is there any pattern to explain why that happens. Usually
it starts with someone down on their luck, a dealer
or perhaps an unsuccessful artist. The fraudster may have no
intention of doing more than tweaking a painting to make
it more saleable, or fabricating just one work to pay
the bills. But what if he or she turns out
(07:13):
to be awfully good at it and the dealer, in
desperate straits buys it. What if the dealer then sells
it for a profit to someone unaware of the fraud,
And so a fascinating dance begins to dance about the
art that's changing hands, but even more so, a dance
about the story behind the art. At first, the froster
tells a bit of the story, just one or two
(07:34):
tantalizing and fabricated bits to explain how and when the
painting was done. And then as the dance goes on,
the victim let's call him the Mark, grows ever more
eager to hear more. After all, the more he hears,
the more the expanding story seems to authenticate the art
he's bought and the money he'll lose if it turns
out the story was a scam. Until the fraudster and
(07:57):
the mark are intertwined, each so eager to believe the
story that for both it sort of comes true. So
it would become for Ann Friedman, the noted galleryes director,
and a mysterious woman named La Rosalez, who, on her
visits to the Nodler starting in always seemed to have
another mid century masterpiece under her arm. As we embark
(08:21):
on this exploration, it's my opinion that Anne sold those
paintings convinced they were real, until the day Glafira brought
the whole story crashing down. I don't believe Anne knew
they were fakes and sold them as fakes. I have
to be honest with you, Alec. I disagree. I think
you couldn't be a well known, long time dealer in
(08:42):
top tier art and sell paintings one after another with
no clear trail of ownership unless you were acting with
criminal intent. I think and knew exactly what she was doing,
if not from the beginning, then soon enough, and that
she hoped she could fool the art world over and
over again, as indeed she did for some fourteen years.
(09:03):
So the first question is whether Ann Friedman knew what
she was buying when she bought these works for whopping
discounts from Gafa Rosalie and her confederates. And the next
question is should Anne's own customers to whom she retailed
these paintings, should they have been more aware of what
they were doing. There's an argument in the art world
(09:24):
that when you purchase an expensive work of art, it's
your obligation, as a sophisticated buyer, to do your research,
talk to experts, and so forth. Robert Store, former director
of the Yale School of Art and one of the
country's most important art critics, said at a conference not
long ago, the collectors are quote unquote stupid to spend
millions of dollars on a work of art without personally
(09:45):
investigating its authenticity. And I think he has a point.
That's an interesting idea. So what's your responsibility, if you're
the buyer, to figure out if my artist fake. I've
got a gallery full of art in the Upper East Side.
Some of it is real, some of it is not.
You decide, Well, that's a fair point. I guess my
reluctance to think the worst event has as much to
(10:07):
do with how I felt about the gallery as what
I felt about her. I'm not a serious collector of
contemporary art, far from it, but I like looking at art,
and on occasion I bought a painting not for seven
or eight figures, but maybe six. In fact, I've been
the victim of an art forgery myself, but we'll get
to that later. The Noodler felt different from almost every
(10:28):
other gallery in New York. There was a stateliness about
the place, a touch of class, old world manners. The
Nole didn't just sell contemporary art. It's old modern art, too,
which is to say art by artists who started before
World War Two, anyone from Brock and Picasso to Francis Bacon.
A sweeping stairway led from the showrooms to the office above,
where Anne Friedman presided. The true marvel of Knoedler was
(10:53):
its legacy. It was the oldest gallery in New York,
opened in eight through those one it five years, and
it never closed, not in the Civil War, not in
World War Two, through every calamity in American history since
the Antebellum era, the k Nodler had survived. But who
was Knodler and how did the venerable gallery get its
(11:15):
start in New York? That's after the break. Give us
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(13:37):
It was an eighteen fifty two that a young and
ambitious gallery assistant named Michael Noldler disembarked from a Transatlantic
ship in New York, scanning the busy waterfront for the
face he hoped to find. Soon enough, he spotted his man,
William Shaus Shows had come from Paris four years earlier
to start a New York branch of a company called
(13:58):
good Peel V. Bail a see soon to be known
as Ndler. Michael K. Nodler was a Goopeel employee in Paris.
That's Dick McIntosh. For years, Dick worked at the Noodler
Gallery as its historian. He was on the verge of
publishing the definitive history of the gallery when its gates
(14:18):
came crashing down. Out of Goopeel met Michael K. Nodler
in Stuttgart in the course of business and brought him
to go Peel and Company in Paris, and Michael Noodler
trained in Paris for a good ten or twelve years.
(14:40):
He was totally a vassal of out of Coupel. William
Schaus was the first person sent here to open the gallery,
who arrived in eighteen forty seven to scout things out
to help us understand how the Nodler became the first
art gallery in New York and how for decades it
(15:01):
remained the Venerable Noteler Gallery, as if venerable was part
of its title. I've asked Noodler historian Dick McIntosh and
Francis Batty to art market experts to share some notdal
history with me at my home on the Upper East Side.
The fact that I live on East seventy third Street,
steps from Freedom and Arts is just a coincidence, though
(15:21):
it does mean I get more sightings of Anne than
I otherwise would, and to be candid, I've often found
myself turning a corner at almost the exact moment and
reaches the corner from the other side, or spotting that
mop of silver curls half a block away heading in
my direction. I would be less than honest if I
did admit I've taken avoidance measures darting between parked cars
(15:42):
or turning so abruptly that I barge into strangers. Hartley
it said, I have nothing to say to her, But
also I know that my Vanity Fair story, while it
seemed fair to me, cut her deeply. That's never my
intent with the magazine story. But sometimes the facts just
go where they will. At any there's not much to
say other than to ask questions she'd rather not answer,
(16:04):
and to watch her stock off and a huff dick.
I know the firm that came to be an odler
didn't start as an art gallery. What was it exactly?
When you walked into the place, what did you see?
A store? The family always called it the store, which
is an indication of its very eclectic nature. It would
(16:27):
be very, very pretentious to call yourself a gallery, because
it's like calling yourself a museum, and that would be,
I think at that point, very inappropriate. That's Francis Batty.
Francis has been an art dealer for nearly forty years,
first in partnership with the late legendary Richard Fagen now
(16:48):
with her son Alex, a tall and suave dealer in
his own right who spends every spare moment schmoozing with
tech billionaires, ready to cover their walls with art. The
point was to sell the ex has stock of the
Goo Peel Company from Paris. The technology of making reproductions
had improved to the point that many more a much
(17:11):
larger quantity of reproductions could be made could be manufactured.
Did reproductions usually mean engravings? Originally it meant engravings, but
by this time there were lithographs, which were the cheapest
and easiest to produce in the largest quality, and etchings
(17:34):
and mixed media. At the same time, though, in the
forties when the store opened, someone was painting right, even
in America. Thomas Cole Asher b drand the whole Hudson
River School in her school Colos let us not forget
the German American Immanuel Leitza who painted the famous Washingtons
(17:59):
crossing the Della Delaware right. In fact, Goupil made reproductions
of the painting in all sizes in Paris and sent
them to America, where they sold like hot kicks. Mark
Twain famously said that If General Washington had known the
extent of reproductions that were going to be made of
his image, he'd have thought twice about crossing the Delaware
in the first place. How did Michael Nodler get involved
(18:21):
when Goupil and Shows had a serious disagreement over how
profits from the New York Gallery We're going to be divided,
Chaos quit and set up his own business, and Michael
Nodler was dispatched here to continue on in eighteen fifty two,
(18:44):
how would you describe the stores evolution from selling reproductions
to actual paintings for the store to become the first
real art gallery in New York gradual, and then it
kind of starts to really pick up steam in the
eight Then you have this extraordinary kind of explosion for
(19:06):
the next thirty years of them bringing major, major pictures,
Goya Turner, I mean, just these legendary names of incredible
quality to America. Did a few collectors become the lynchpins
(19:27):
of Noted success. I'm thinking Henry Clay Frick, for one,
the great steel industrialist. Frick, for many years was Noted's
biggest client. The first painting he bought was four and
immediately afterwards he began buying in real quantity, and his
(19:49):
close association with the noted gallery lasted for the rest
of his lifetime, in other words, until when he died.
And when he died, Charles Carstairs, the man who had
sold me on the first painting, was a pall bearer
at his funeral. Michael Nodler made the gallery grow, and
(20:14):
so did his sons. As it did, it began moving uptown,
up along Broadway, then over to Fifth Avenue, following the
city's own restless course. The location of the store was
important for two reasons. First, it was in Littlefarge buildings.
The choice of the location was determined by a network
(20:38):
of French people in New York, one of whom was
the father of Jean LeFarge, the artist, who was a
real estate investor, a successful real estate investor in early
New York. Secondly, due to the rise of department store
(21:00):
in Paris in the mid nineteenth century, which is where
they really began in the form that we know them today,
it was clear to all concern that it was a
good idea to be located near a department store, because
that's where everybody went for every last little thing. As
(21:24):
the Ndlers migrated, they started taking on more original art,
even oil paintings. They sold to the founders of new
American fortunes. Vanderbilt's Asters and Rockefeller's all frequented Ndler. So
did Henry Flagler of Standard Oil and sugar refiner H. O.
Have Ameyer. In the course of two days, railroad magnate
(21:46):
Jay Gould bought twenty two pictures. All of these grandees
had more than paintings on the walls of their brand
new mansions. They had collections. Then in the early ties,
the dashing Roland Ballet, a Knodler on his mother's side,
came from Paris in his twenties to work at the
(22:07):
family business. The last of the Ndler family directors, Roland
had no choice, really but to join the store when
he came of age. Roland liked to recall that his
very first memory of meeting an artist came when he
was just five. His parents brought him to the Parisian
countryside of State of Giverny to have lunch with Claude Monet.
(22:31):
They brought a ham that got sliced at a table
in the garden. For the rest of his life, Roland
would remember the white bearded artist eating the ham and
looking at him with kindly eyes against a backdrop of
water lilies. Roland arrived in New York in Nino at
the age of twenty two, drinking most of the way
(22:53):
with Pierre Matisse, the artist's son who would remain a
lifelong pal. He came bearing other friendships with some of
Paris's best contemporary artists, brac Lejee and Picasso. To his chagrin,
he found his older family members in New York underwhelmed
by the paintings he brought. Put them in the basement.
(23:15):
They told him when he showed them the new Cubists
that Paris had embraced, the children will take them. The
Knoedler wasn't avant garde, as its family directors reminded Roland,
it solved the art of its times, or, perhaps more accurately,
it sold the art of the times its buyers embraced,
(23:36):
which tended to be a decade or two behind contemporary art.
Roland had no choice but to grit his teeth and
sell his clients what they wanted. In the aftermath of
World War Two, a new school of art arose to
show its devastation. The often brutal, sweeping brushstrokes of abstract Expressionism.
(23:58):
Yet Noodler kept its distance as painters like Jackson Pollock
and William Dacooning, Clifford Still, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko
rose with a new generation of dealers, namely Betty Parsons,
Sidney Janie and Leo Castelli. These were the groundbreaking dealers
of the nineteen fifties. Very few people were buying contemporary art.
(24:19):
If Pollock hadn't had Peggy Guggenheim, he would have starved.
They were all starving in the fifties. They really were
not until sort of Andy Warhol started to make money
out of art under Roland Ballet. The k Nodler was
running out of steam. Having missed the post war era,
(24:40):
it went on to overlook pop art too. By the
end of the sixties, it had moved to East, then
proceeded to spend so much money renovating its newly acquired
mansion that it nearly went broke. The Knodler needed an angel,
someone far more deep pocketed than Roland Ballet. In ninet
seventy one, the Knodler found that angel in armand Hammer,
(25:04):
the billionaire industrialist, knowing how financially imperiled Roland Ballet's Ndler
was Hammer bought the gallery for two point five million
dollars in nineteen seventy one. For that modest sum Hammer
got Knodler's business, its artists, its reputation and history. He
(25:24):
also got the Italian Renaissance mansion at nineteen East seventieth Street.
Not long after that deal, Hammer would buy the adjacent
mansion at one East seventieth Street. For Hammer, the deal
was as much about real estate as art. Hammer hired
one of his two grandsons, Michael, to run the gallery
(25:45):
as part of a family foundation. Incidentally, Michael's son, Army Hammer,
would become a well known Hollywood actor. Still, Michael Hammer
needed top rate dealers who could finally bring contemporary artists
to musty Old Ndler. He found them in Lawrence Reuben
and John Richardson. Reuben was a widely respected private dealer
(26:10):
whose artists included Richard Deepencorn, Robert Motherwell, and Robert Rauschenberg.
Larry Ruben was very famous because he was the brother
of Bill Reuben, who I had actually worked for in
the seventies. They were arguably two of the most important
(26:32):
people in the entire art world. Bill Reuben was the
chief curator of the Museum of Modern Art, and that
was a time when the chief curator of the Museum
of Modern Art was more important than any director anywhere.
And the fact that his brother actually ran Knodler was
(26:53):
a let's say, a subject of both admiration and envy
and some sort of I would say snarkiness, because people
would say, well, Bill Rubens having a big Frank Stella
show at the Museum of Modern Art, which would of
course make Frank Stella's incredibly valuable. And at the same
(27:18):
time Stella was represented by his brother who was running
the Nodler Gallery. So there was some more than whispering
about conflict of interest, but um, it was evaded by
Bill Reuben very effectively. We'll be back in a minute.
(27:43):
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(29:31):
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you get your podcasts. Larry brought with him a number
of artists who really almost overnight returned the note alert
(29:51):
to some sort of eminence. I mean, I'm thinking of
obviously Stella, as you mentioned, Deven Corn, Richard deven Corn
another huge coup, and was in Robert Rauschenberg there for
at least part of the town. Yes, I think Rauschenberg
was there, and mother, well, you know, abstract expressionism was
Bill and Larry's kind of sweet spot. And so you know,
(30:17):
those artists were artists that were celebrated the Museum of
Modern Art and celebrated and I'm sure ensured Ndler's financial
viability and success at that time, along with Larry Reuben
Michael Hammer's other heavy gun was John Richardson, an english
born critic, curator, Picasso biographer and men about town. He
(30:42):
told naughty stories about wealthy people and made them clamor
for more. Along with handling artists he brought to Knoedler himself.
Richardson was induced to take on Salvador Dolly, or as
he came to put it, to join the Dolly team.
Dolly had been with k Noodler since the nineteen pennies,
when Roland Ballet had brought him in. Roland's wife Felice,
(31:05):
tells the story of how he brought Dolly to Roland
was a very good friend of Christian Dior since they
were young, and Christian Dior was had a little gallery
in Paris, and he and Rollan had lunch one day
and Dior said to him, you know, I'm representing a
(31:26):
Spanish artist. I'm having a show of his right now.
Would you come to the gallery after lunch? And Rolland
said sure, I'd love to. And he went to the
gallery and looked at the paintings and it was this
young Spanish artist named Salvador Dolly. And of course nod
La Gallery was a big deal gallery and Christian Dior
(31:46):
just had this little thing and he said to Roland,
do you really like him? He said, yes, I like
his work very much. And Dior said, would you be
interested in taking him on for Ndler and Rolland said,
I really would. I'd like to meet him and I'd
like to to see more of his work. And that's
what happened, and his role on always tells the story.
(32:09):
I took Dolly to Knodler and Christian Deal went onto
the dress business. Dolly's health was fragile now, but the
old surrealist remained immensely popular and sold out bi annual
shows at Nodler with a little help from the staff.
In an interview for Vanity Fair, Richardson described Dolly's poignant situation.
(32:36):
It was fascinating because he couldn't draw anymore. Richardson recalled
of Dolly his hands were too weak for him to
do the work. All he could do was sign his name.
His eyes had gone. To put Dolly in a good mood,
the staff would bring female models down to the basement,
have them undress, and tell them to roll around naked
(32:59):
on law pieces of rolling paper smeared with blue paint.
For one show, Dolly had the idea to do holograms
of his own work, but he hadn't made them yet.
Richardson explained, in order to do them, we had to
find some original dollies. So Roland and I went down
to the basement and we found a bunch of old
(33:20):
nineteen century sculpture of no great distinction. We got someone
to paint antlers on a loaf of bread and other
surrealist cliches, and this crap sold. Dolly's only contribution was
a huge signature, because that's all he could do anymore.
It was, in its way a kind of art world fraud,
(33:41):
except that the clay lumps and the blue painted paper
and the holograms were at least touched and blessed by
the artist, and buyers, foolish as they might be, more
or less new what they were buying. Coincidentally, it was
at a Salvador Dolly opening at the n Odler Gallery
in nineteen sixty eight where Philly Say first laid eyes
(34:03):
on Roland Dallet. As she recalls, it was love at
first sight. It was a Dolly opening. I was representing
Dolly at the time in the United States, and I
went with his manager and his wife and we went
to the gallery and as I walked in, I saw
this man at the end of the gallery and I
(34:25):
just thought to myself, my god, that's the man of
my life. I was married at the time you were married. Yes,
he was married with I don't know how many mistresses,
and there were thirty eight years between you. Yes, he
was so delightfully charming. This is European elegance like doesn't
(34:45):
exist anymore, didn't even really exist then. It was five
years later, in nineteen seventy three, when Philie Say was
arriving at Michael Hammer's gallery to meet a client for lunch.
When would bring the two back together this time for good.
I went to the gallery and we were up on
the second floor and the elevator opened and then off
(35:11):
the elevator came roll on and I was like, oh
my god, and I said, I've been in Paris for
three months. If I can't pull this off today, there's
something definitely wrong with me. At the end of lunch,
we got up and rolland came over to me and
he said, you know, I really enjoyed having lunch with you.
(35:33):
I find you charming, but I would like it if
we could have lunch just the two of us, would
you do that? And I said, just tell me when.
And we had lunch the next day and really practically
didn't separate from that moment on. With the sale of
Knodler to armand Hammer, Roland Ballet began organizing his exit.
(35:58):
He married Philie Say, she at twenty eight, he at
sixty six, and the two moved to Paris. They lived
like the newly weds. They were oblivious to their nearly
four decade age difference until armand Hammer disrupted their idol.
Hammer owed a third and final payment to Ballet to
(36:18):
complete his purchase of the Knoedler Gallery and simply refused
to make it. Roland was appalled. He never thought armand
Hammer would be so awful and such a crook, Pelisse
recalled later a judge had to intervene. We were in
Paris and we got this call from his lawyer that
Almand Hamma was going to be in New York in
(36:40):
two days and he wanted to settle it, and Roland,
if he really wanted to do, they should come to
New York. So we dropped everything and flew to New York.
Roland went to court and Hammah was there and the
thing was. He said, yes, you know all settlements. And
Roland said, I I have to go back to France
(37:00):
and I have things to do, and if you want
to settle it, I want a bank check for it
by the end of the day. Today Hammer gave the check.
By the end of the day, the bank check, and
we went back to Paris. Six of the art business.
(37:21):
Roland Ballet resigned as Noodler's director and settled in to
enjoy what would prove to be twenty five more years
of conjugal bliss with his young and adoring wife. He
owned one of the two buildings on East seventy Street,
number twenty one, which would eventually pass to Philly Say
and be sold by her in two thousand eleven for
(37:42):
fifteen and a half million dollars, but he rarely came
to the gallery anymore. So he almost certainly failed to
notice a nine year old salesperson who joined Nodler in
December nine. Her name was Ann Friedman, and her impact
on the gallery would be both profound and tragic. Over
(38:04):
many of its fifty plus years, the Knoler had been
a living, breathing presence, a character in the story of
twenty century art. Its fortunes had risen and sometimes dipped,
but its reputation remained intact, and the employees who chose
to work there for modest salaries were personally devoted to it.
(38:26):
They would find in Ann Freedman a very different kind
of gallerists, one much more focused on money that art.
Over a fourteen year period, Ann Friedman oversaw the selling
of more than sixty disputed paintings, reaping eighty million dollars
for the gallery, A trio of forgers and Freedman herself
(38:48):
to the shock and scorn of the entire contemporary art market.
She even managed to open a new gallery, Friedman Arts,
on the third floor of a town house on East
seventy third Street, next door to the chic Via Quadrono restaurant.
She goes up and down those stairs every day, a
free woman, but a shunned presence in this neighborhood of
(39:10):
world renowned dealers. We're coming back from Frank Stella's studio
and you got a call and now he's boiling. He
wants to kill her. That's next time on art fraud.
Come with me and you be, you know, world of
(39:32):
pure imagination Taco and you see into your imagination Art.
Fraud is brought to you by I Heart Radio and
(39:52):
Cavalry Audio. Our executive producers are Matt del Piano, Keegan Rosenberger,
myself and Michael s Ayerson. We're produced by Brandon Morgan
and Zach McNeice. Zack also edited and mixed this episode.
Lindsay Hoffman is our managing producer. Our writer is Michael Schneerson.
(40:15):
If you want to view Parahize, simply look around and
not ething you want want to change the world, There's nothing.
(40:47):
What's up, guys? I'm a Shop Bloud and I am
Troy Millions and we are the host of the Ernia
Leisure podcast when we break down business models and examine
the latest trans and finance. We hold court and have
exclusive interviews with some of the biggest names of business,
sporting and entertainment, from DJ Khaled to Mark Cuban, Rick
Ross and Shaquille O'Neil. I mean. Our alumni list is expansive.
Listen in as our guests reveal their business models, hardships
(41:08):
and triumphs and their respective fields. The knowledge is in
death and the questions are always delivered from your standpoint.
We want to know what you want to know. We
talked to the legends of business, sports, and entertainment about
how they got their start and most importantly, how they
make their money. Earn Your Leisia is a college business
class mixed with pop culture. I want to learn about
the real estate game, unclears, how the stock market works.
(41:28):
We got you interested in starting a truck and company
or vendor machine business. Not really sure about how taxes
or credit work. We got it all covered. The Earnier
Leisure podcast is available now. Listen to Earn Your Leisure
on the Black Effect podcast Network, I Heart Radio, app,
Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. This is
(41:50):
Roxanne Gay, the host of The Roxanne Gay Agenda, the
bad feminist podcast of Your Dreams. Each week, I talked
to an interesting person about feminine is, some race, writing
in books, and art, food, have culture, and yes, politics,
we can't escape politics. Listen to the Luminary original podcast,
The Rock Sand Gay Agenda every Tuesday on the I
(42:13):
Heart Radio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On the latest season of the Next Question with Katie
Correct podcast, Katie dives into Well Katie Here exclusive podcast
only conversations between Katie and the people who made her
memoir Going There possible. Katie is a pack rad and
(42:35):
she has basically her own archive of sorts in her basements. Plus,
Katie explores some of the big news stories she's covered
over the decades and the people behind them, like Anita Hill,
I thought I could just get back to my life,
and that was impossible. It was not going to be
the same. There's plenty of Katie's signature curiosity and no
(42:57):
holds barred interviews, along with some of her own and
revealing answers. We spent a lot of time together around
a dining room table here and in the city, and
you know, it was a very intense experience. All episodes
of Next Question with Katie Curic are available now. Listen
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(43:18):
you get your podcasts.
Hey, Hey, this is John O'Brien, entrepreneur and a fellow
builder just like you. Thanks for the help of I
Heart Radio and Prudential Financial. I'd like to present to
you my brand new podcast. It's called Building the Good
where each week a special friend and I will unpack
and talk in detail about financial literals, building generational well
building that community, building the best version of you. Make
(00:22):
sure to listen to Building a Good Life on the
I Heart Radio, app, Apple podcast or wherever you get
your podcast. Give us ever attention. We need everything you
got fast. Waiting on Reparations would beat the Illes podcast two.
It in every Thursday politics and wordplay. We fight for
the people because they got us in the worst way,
from the Hill Cooper, the Bomb Bay to Kant, from
(00:44):
the left enclave to what the neo Kanz say every
conversation and to break us off with some break because
we're waiting. Listen to Waiting on Reparations and I Heard
Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
From Cavalry Audio comes the new true crime podcast, The
Shadow Girls. I grew up near the banks of the
(01:07):
Green River and in the shadow of the killer that
bears its name. Prosecutors described him as a serial killer
surve But this podcast isn't only about tracking down the killer.
It's about the victims. We stayed in the woods. He
always liked to go into words. Listen to the Shadow
Girls on the I Heart Radio app, on Apple Podcasts,
(01:28):
or wherever you get your podcasts. Just off Madison Avenue
on East seventy third Street for lunchtime. Crowded via quadron
O fills every sidewalk table as well as the seats
in its pandemic inspired shed. It's a cheerful neighborhood joint,
(01:52):
catering to a young crowd with great coffee, sandwiches and pasta.
A sense of triumph pervades the place. Among all the
restaurants closed by COVID nineteen, Via Quadrono is more popular
than ever. Often from a townhouse next door, a stooped
figure emerges from an upper floor and makes her way
(02:14):
down the stately front steps past the millennials. She looks
smaller than she once did, as if scrunched by the
circumstances that led her here, though she still has the
white corkscrew curls that made her stand out in any
art fair or gallery. Opening and the stern, almost imperious
mien for which she was known. A little over a
(02:39):
decade ago, Ann Friedman was among the most powerful art
dealers in New York. Her fiefdom was the Knoedler Gallery,
from which she sold works by many of the best
known artists of the mid twentieth century, Mark Rothko, William Dacooning,
Barnett Newman, Clifford Still, and Jackson Pollock. Today, the Knodler
(03:06):
is gone. Just three blocks down Madison on the north
Side street stand the ghosts of the now infamous gallery.
Two adjoining limestone mansions in the Italian Renaissance style with
ornate stone arches topped by decorative balconies. In the galleries
own Renaissance, a royal blue Awning announced the Ndler's two
(03:30):
buildings in capital letters. In this season of Art Fraud,
we're examining the rise and fall of the Knodler Gallery.
It's a story about one of New York City's oldest
and most celebrated galleries dealing in world class art, and
(03:51):
how its doors would close forever in the face of
insurmountable pressure, ultimately in the form of looming prison to time.
We're talking of course about paintings, fake paintings, or more plainly, forgeries.
The best fakes are still hanging off people's walls. You
know they don't even know or suspect that they're fakes.
(04:15):
Of course, art forgeries only happen because there's money to
be made, a lot of money. Tens of millions of
dollars would change hands between a cast of characters before
it was all over. A few profited, some were cheated,
and at least one person would find themselves behind bars.
(04:37):
With me today is Michael Schneerson, a long time contributing
editor for Vanity Fair, whose feature story on the Knoedler
Gallery appeared in the magazine shortly after the scandal broke
in the spring of two thousand twelve. Michael is also
the author of Boom Mad Money. Mega Dealers and the
Rise of Contemporary Art are compelling and entertaining over view
(05:00):
of the dealers who helped make the contemporary art market
what it is today. The honest dealers, I hasten to add,
because generally these dealers were and are honest, driven by
a passion for their artists far more than profit. Here's
Michael Schneerson. I've written a lot of articles for Vanity Fair,
but the Notlar case sticks in my mind because at
(05:22):
the heart of it lies an unresolved mystery. The story,
of course, has taken some turns that even Anne Friedman
could not have predicted. You could say that about the
whole contemporary art market. I suppose who would have imagined
at the start of the century that an artist named
Jeff Coon's would make a supersized stainless steel rabbit that's
(05:44):
sold at auction in May two th nineteen for million dollars,
the highest price ever paid for a living artist's work.
Who could have predicted that a young Brooklyn artist named
Jean Michel Baskuillade would make his oddly haunting abstract portraits
of tribal figures and totems in a basement for drug money,
only to have them sell after his premature death for
(06:07):
as much as a hundred and ten million dollars. Record
Breaking sales like that have done more than juice the
art market. They've led to a gray market of private
dealings that thrive in a hot climate. It's important to
note that the art market is still the world's largest
unregulated business. Legal business anyway, you have to do what
you say you'll do when striking a deal. You have
(06:27):
to pay your taxes, and that's about it. I remember
going to a mega dealer's home in East Hampton one
night and commenting that the art market was the last
unregulated multibillion dollar equity market in the world. Our host said,
and let's try to keep it that way, as his
guests raised their glasses and toasted. When a dealer goes
(06:51):
further trafficking and paintings that turn out to be fakes,
is there any pattern to explain why that happens. Usually
it starts with someone down on their luck, a dealer
or perhaps an unsuccessful artist. The fraudster may have no
intention of doing more than tweaking a painting to make
it more saleable, or fabricating just one work to pay
the bills. But what if he or she turns out
(07:13):
to be awfully good at it and the dealer, in
desperate straits buys it. What if the dealer then sells
it for a profit to someone unaware of the fraud,
And so a fascinating dance begins to dance about the
art that's changing hands, but even more so, a dance
about the story behind the art. At first, the froster
tells a bit of the story, just one or two
(07:34):
tantalizing and fabricated bits to explain how and when the
painting was done. And then as the dance goes on,
the victim let's call him the Mark, grows ever more
eager to hear more. After all, the more he hears,
the more the expanding story seems to authenticate the art
he's bought and the money he'll lose if it turns
out the story was a scam. Until the fraudster and
(07:57):
the mark are intertwined, each so eager to believe the
story that for both it sort of comes true. So
it would become for Ann Friedman, the noted galleryes director,
and a mysterious woman named La Rosalez, who, on her
visits to the Nodler starting in always seemed to have
another mid century masterpiece under her arm. As we embark
(08:21):
on this exploration, it's my opinion that Anne sold those
paintings convinced they were real, until the day Glafira brought
the whole story crashing down. I don't believe Anne knew
they were fakes and sold them as fakes. I have
to be honest with you, Alec. I disagree. I think
you couldn't be a well known, long time dealer in
(08:42):
top tier art and sell paintings one after another with
no clear trail of ownership unless you were acting with
criminal intent. I think and knew exactly what she was doing,
if not from the beginning, then soon enough, and that
she hoped she could fool the art world over and
over again, as indeed she did for some fourteen years.
(09:03):
So the first question is whether Ann Friedman knew what
she was buying when she bought these works for whopping
discounts from Gafa Rosalie and her confederates. And the next
question is should Anne's own customers to whom she retailed
these paintings, should they have been more aware of what
they were doing. There's an argument in the art world
(09:24):
that when you purchase an expensive work of art, it's
your obligation, as a sophisticated buyer, to do your research,
talk to experts, and so forth. Robert Store, former director
of the Yale School of Art and one of the
country's most important art critics, said at a conference not
long ago, the collectors are quote unquote stupid to spend
millions of dollars on a work of art without personally
(09:45):
investigating its authenticity. And I think he has a point.
That's an interesting idea. So what's your responsibility, if you're
the buyer, to figure out if my artist fake. I've
got a gallery full of art in the Upper East Side.
Some of it is real, some of it is not.
You decide, Well, that's a fair point. I guess my
reluctance to think the worst event has as much to
(10:07):
do with how I felt about the gallery as what
I felt about her. I'm not a serious collector of
contemporary art, far from it, but I like looking at art,
and on occasion I bought a painting not for seven
or eight figures, but maybe six. In fact, I've been
the victim of an art forgery myself, but we'll get
to that later. The Noodler felt different from almost every
(10:28):
other gallery in New York. There was a stateliness about
the place, a touch of class, old world manners. The
Nole didn't just sell contemporary art. It's old modern art, too,
which is to say art by artists who started before
World War Two, anyone from Brock and Picasso to Francis Bacon.
A sweeping stairway led from the showrooms to the office above,
where Anne Friedman presided. The true marvel of Knoedler was
(10:53):
its legacy. It was the oldest gallery in New York,
opened in eight through those one it five years, and
it never closed, not in the Civil War, not in
World War Two, through every calamity in American history since
the Antebellum era, the k Nodler had survived. But who
was Knodler and how did the venerable gallery get its
(11:15):
start in New York? That's after the break. Give us
the over attention. We need everything you've got fast Waiting
on Reparations. We beat the podcast in every Thursday politics
(11:39):
in wordplay. We fight for the people because they got
us in the worst way, from the Hill Cooper, the
Bombay to Kanye, from the left enclave to what the
neo Kanza, every conversation to break us off with some
break because we wait in the reparations. Listen to Waiting
on Reparations on I Heart Radio, app Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcast us. If I could be
(12:02):
you and you could be me for just one hour,
if you could find a way to get inside each
other's mind, walk a mile in my shoes wacome mile
in my shoes shoes. We've all felt left out, and
for some that feeling lasts more than a moment. We
can change that. Learn how it belonging begins with us
(12:23):
dot org, brought to you by the AD Council. Welcome
out and my shoes. What's up, guys. I'm a Shot
Blau and I am Troy Millions and we are the
host of the Earnier Leisure podcast where we break down
business models and examine the latest trans and finance. We
hold court and have exclusive interviews with some of the
biggest names of business, sport, and entertainment, from DJ Khaled
(12:46):
to Mark Cuban, Rick Ross and Shaquill O'Neil. I mean
our alumni list is expansive listening as our guests reveal
their business models, hardships and triumphs and their respective fields.
The knowledge is in death and the questions are always
delivered from your standpoint. We want to know what you
want to know. We talked to the legends of business,
sports and entertainment about how they got their start and
most importantly, how they make their money. Earnia Leisia is
(13:07):
a college business class mixed with pop culture. I want
to learn about the real estate game. Unclear is how
the stock market works. We got you interested in starting
the truck and company or vendor machine business. Not really
sure about how taxes or credit work. We got it
all covered. The Earnie Leisure podcast is available now. Listen
to Ernie Leisure on the Black Effect Podcast Network, I
Heart Radio, app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
(13:37):
It was an eighteen fifty two that a young and
ambitious gallery assistant named Michael Noldler disembarked from a Transatlantic
ship in New York, scanning the busy waterfront for the
face he hoped to find. Soon enough, he spotted his man,
William Shaus Shows had come from Paris four years earlier
to start a New York branch of a company called
(13:58):
good Peel V. Bail a see soon to be known
as Ndler. Michael K. Nodler was a Goopeel employee in Paris.
That's Dick McIntosh. For years, Dick worked at the Noodler
Gallery as its historian. He was on the verge of
publishing the definitive history of the gallery when its gates
(14:18):
came crashing down. Out of Goopeel met Michael K. Nodler
in Stuttgart in the course of business and brought him
to go Peel and Company in Paris, and Michael Noodler
trained in Paris for a good ten or twelve years.
(14:40):
He was totally a vassal of out of Coupel. William
Schaus was the first person sent here to open the gallery,
who arrived in eighteen forty seven to scout things out
to help us understand how the Nodler became the first
art gallery in New York and how for decades it
(15:01):
remained the Venerable Noteler Gallery, as if venerable was part
of its title. I've asked Noodler historian Dick McIntosh and
Francis Batty to art market experts to share some notdal
history with me at my home on the Upper East Side.
The fact that I live on East seventy third Street,
steps from Freedom and Arts is just a coincidence, though
(15:21):
it does mean I get more sightings of Anne than
I otherwise would, and to be candid, I've often found
myself turning a corner at almost the exact moment and
reaches the corner from the other side, or spotting that
mop of silver curls half a block away heading in
my direction. I would be less than honest if I
did admit I've taken avoidance measures darting between parked cars
(15:42):
or turning so abruptly that I barge into strangers. Hartley
it said, I have nothing to say to her, But
also I know that my Vanity Fair story, while it
seemed fair to me, cut her deeply. That's never my
intent with the magazine story. But sometimes the facts just
go where they will. At any there's not much to
say other than to ask questions she'd rather not answer,
(16:04):
and to watch her stock off and a huff dick.
I know the firm that came to be an odler
didn't start as an art gallery. What was it exactly?
When you walked into the place, what did you see?
A store? The family always called it the store, which
is an indication of its very eclectic nature. It would
(16:27):
be very, very pretentious to call yourself a gallery, because
it's like calling yourself a museum, and that would be,
I think at that point, very inappropriate. That's Francis Batty.
Francis has been an art dealer for nearly forty years,
first in partnership with the late legendary Richard Fagen now
(16:48):
with her son Alex, a tall and suave dealer in
his own right who spends every spare moment schmoozing with
tech billionaires, ready to cover their walls with art. The
point was to sell the ex has stock of the
Goo Peel Company from Paris. The technology of making reproductions
had improved to the point that many more a much
(17:11):
larger quantity of reproductions could be made could be manufactured.
Did reproductions usually mean engravings? Originally it meant engravings, but
by this time there were lithographs, which were the cheapest
and easiest to produce in the largest quality, and etchings
(17:34):
and mixed media. At the same time, though, in the
forties when the store opened, someone was painting right, even
in America. Thomas Cole Asher b drand the whole Hudson
River School in her school Colos let us not forget
the German American Immanuel Leitza who painted the famous Washingtons
(17:59):
crossing the Della Delaware right. In fact, Goupil made reproductions
of the painting in all sizes in Paris and sent
them to America, where they sold like hot kicks. Mark
Twain famously said that If General Washington had known the
extent of reproductions that were going to be made of
his image, he'd have thought twice about crossing the Delaware
in the first place. How did Michael Nodler get involved
(18:21):
when Goupil and Shows had a serious disagreement over how
profits from the New York Gallery We're going to be divided,
Chaos quit and set up his own business, and Michael
Nodler was dispatched here to continue on in eighteen fifty two,
(18:44):
how would you describe the stores evolution from selling reproductions
to actual paintings for the store to become the first
real art gallery in New York gradual, and then it
kind of starts to really pick up steam in the
eight Then you have this extraordinary kind of explosion for
(19:06):
the next thirty years of them bringing major, major pictures,
Goya Turner, I mean, just these legendary names of incredible
quality to America. Did a few collectors become the lynchpins
(19:27):
of Noted success. I'm thinking Henry Clay Frick, for one,
the great steel industrialist. Frick, for many years was Noted's
biggest client. The first painting he bought was four and
immediately afterwards he began buying in real quantity, and his
(19:49):
close association with the noted gallery lasted for the rest
of his lifetime, in other words, until when he died.
And when he died, Charles Carstairs, the man who had
sold me on the first painting, was a pall bearer
at his funeral. Michael Nodler made the gallery grow, and
(20:14):
so did his sons. As it did, it began moving uptown,
up along Broadway, then over to Fifth Avenue, following the
city's own restless course. The location of the store was
important for two reasons. First, it was in Littlefarge buildings.
The choice of the location was determined by a network
(20:38):
of French people in New York, one of whom was
the father of Jean LeFarge, the artist, who was a
real estate investor, a successful real estate investor in early
New York. Secondly, due to the rise of department store
(21:00):
in Paris in the mid nineteenth century, which is where
they really began in the form that we know them today,
it was clear to all concern that it was a
good idea to be located near a department store, because
that's where everybody went for every last little thing. As
(21:24):
the Ndlers migrated, they started taking on more original art,
even oil paintings. They sold to the founders of new
American fortunes. Vanderbilt's Asters and Rockefeller's all frequented Ndler. So
did Henry Flagler of Standard Oil and sugar refiner H. O.
Have Ameyer. In the course of two days, railroad magnate
(21:46):
Jay Gould bought twenty two pictures. All of these grandees
had more than paintings on the walls of their brand
new mansions. They had collections. Then in the early ties,
the dashing Roland Ballet, a Knodler on his mother's side,
came from Paris in his twenties to work at the
(22:07):
family business. The last of the Ndler family directors, Roland
had no choice, really but to join the store when
he came of age. Roland liked to recall that his
very first memory of meeting an artist came when he
was just five. His parents brought him to the Parisian
countryside of State of Giverny to have lunch with Claude Monet.
(22:31):
They brought a ham that got sliced at a table
in the garden. For the rest of his life, Roland
would remember the white bearded artist eating the ham and
looking at him with kindly eyes against a backdrop of
water lilies. Roland arrived in New York in Nino at
the age of twenty two, drinking most of the way
(22:53):
with Pierre Matisse, the artist's son who would remain a
lifelong pal. He came bearing other friendships with some of
Paris's best contemporary artists, brac Lejee and Picasso. To his chagrin,
he found his older family members in New York underwhelmed
by the paintings he brought. Put them in the basement.
(23:15):
They told him when he showed them the new Cubists
that Paris had embraced, the children will take them. The
Knoedler wasn't avant garde, as its family directors reminded Roland,
it solved the art of its times, or, perhaps more accurately,
it sold the art of the times its buyers embraced,
(23:36):
which tended to be a decade or two behind contemporary art.
Roland had no choice but to grit his teeth and
sell his clients what they wanted. In the aftermath of
World War Two, a new school of art arose to
show its devastation. The often brutal, sweeping brushstrokes of abstract Expressionism.
(23:58):
Yet Noodler kept its distance as painters like Jackson Pollock
and William Dacooning, Clifford Still, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko
rose with a new generation of dealers, namely Betty Parsons,
Sidney Janie and Leo Castelli. These were the groundbreaking dealers
of the nineteen fifties. Very few people were buying contemporary art.
(24:19):
If Pollock hadn't had Peggy Guggenheim, he would have starved.
They were all starving in the fifties. They really were
not until sort of Andy Warhol started to make money
out of art under Roland Ballet. The k Nodler was
running out of steam. Having missed the post war era,
(24:40):
it went on to overlook pop art too. By the
end of the sixties, it had moved to East, then
proceeded to spend so much money renovating its newly acquired
mansion that it nearly went broke. The Knodler needed an angel,
someone far more deep pocketed than Roland Ballet. In ninet
seventy one, the Knodler found that angel in armand Hammer,
(25:04):
the billionaire industrialist, knowing how financially imperiled Roland Ballet's Ndler
was Hammer bought the gallery for two point five million
dollars in nineteen seventy one. For that modest sum Hammer
got Knodler's business, its artists, its reputation and history. He
(25:24):
also got the Italian Renaissance mansion at nineteen East seventieth Street.
Not long after that deal, Hammer would buy the adjacent
mansion at one East seventieth Street. For Hammer, the deal
was as much about real estate as art. Hammer hired
one of his two grandsons, Michael, to run the gallery
(25:45):
as part of a family foundation. Incidentally, Michael's son, Army Hammer,
would become a well known Hollywood actor. Still, Michael Hammer
needed top rate dealers who could finally bring contemporary artists
to musty Old Ndler. He found them in Lawrence Reuben
and John Richardson. Reuben was a widely respected private dealer
(26:10):
whose artists included Richard Deepencorn, Robert Motherwell, and Robert Rauschenberg.
Larry Ruben was very famous because he was the brother
of Bill Reuben, who I had actually worked for in
the seventies. They were arguably two of the most important
(26:32):
people in the entire art world. Bill Reuben was the
chief curator of the Museum of Modern Art, and that
was a time when the chief curator of the Museum
of Modern Art was more important than any director anywhere.
And the fact that his brother actually ran Knodler was
(26:53):
a let's say, a subject of both admiration and envy
and some sort of I would say snarkiness, because people
would say, well, Bill Rubens having a big Frank Stella
show at the Museum of Modern Art, which would of
course make Frank Stella's incredibly valuable. And at the same
(27:18):
time Stella was represented by his brother who was running
the Nodler Gallery. So there was some more than whispering
about conflict of interest, but um, it was evaded by
Bill Reuben very effectively. We'll be back in a minute.
(27:43):
What grows in the forest trees? Sure, no, what else
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(28:03):
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nine O two one OMG joined Jenny Garth and Tori
Spelling for a rewatch of the hit series Beverly Hills
(28:25):
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get to tell the fans all of the behind the
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on camera, obviously, but we can tell them all the
good stuff that happened off camera. Get all the juicy
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As nine O two one oh, super fan and radio
host Sissany sits in with Jenny and Tory, two reminisce,
(28:48):
reflect and relive each moment, from Brandon and Kelly's first
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You remember everything about the entire ten years that we
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ten years that we film that show. Listen to nine
O two one OMG on the I Heart Radio app,
(29:09):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Conquer your
New Year's resolution to be more productive with the Before
Breakfast podcast. In each bite sized daily episode, time management
and productivity expert Laura Vanderkam teaches you how to make
the most of your time, both at work and at home.
These are the practical suggestions you need to get more
(29:31):
done with your day. Just as lifting weights keeps our
body strong as we age, learning new skills is the
mental equivalent of pumping iron. Listen to Before Breakfast wherever
you get your podcasts. Larry brought with him a number
of artists who really almost overnight returned the note alert
(29:51):
to some sort of eminence. I mean, I'm thinking of
obviously Stella, as you mentioned, Deven Corn, Richard deven Corn
another huge coup, and was in Robert Rauschenberg there for
at least part of the town. Yes, I think Rauschenberg
was there, and mother, well, you know, abstract expressionism was
Bill and Larry's kind of sweet spot. And so you know,
(30:17):
those artists were artists that were celebrated the Museum of
Modern Art and celebrated and I'm sure ensured Ndler's financial
viability and success at that time, along with Larry Reuben
Michael Hammer's other heavy gun was John Richardson, an english
born critic, curator, Picasso biographer and men about town. He
(30:42):
told naughty stories about wealthy people and made them clamor
for more. Along with handling artists he brought to Knoedler himself.
Richardson was induced to take on Salvador Dolly, or as
he came to put it, to join the Dolly team.
Dolly had been with k Noodler since the nineteen pennies,
when Roland Ballet had brought him in. Roland's wife Felice,
(31:05):
tells the story of how he brought Dolly to Roland
was a very good friend of Christian Dior since they
were young, and Christian Dior was had a little gallery
in Paris, and he and Rollan had lunch one day
and Dior said to him, you know, I'm representing a
(31:26):
Spanish artist. I'm having a show of his right now.
Would you come to the gallery after lunch? And Rolland
said sure, I'd love to. And he went to the
gallery and looked at the paintings and it was this
young Spanish artist named Salvador Dolly. And of course nod
La Gallery was a big deal gallery and Christian Dior
(31:46):
just had this little thing and he said to Roland,
do you really like him? He said, yes, I like
his work very much. And Dior said, would you be
interested in taking him on for Ndler and Rolland said,
I really would. I'd like to meet him and I'd
like to to see more of his work. And that's
what happened, and his role on always tells the story.
(32:09):
I took Dolly to Knodler and Christian Deal went onto
the dress business. Dolly's health was fragile now, but the
old surrealist remained immensely popular and sold out bi annual
shows at Nodler with a little help from the staff.
In an interview for Vanity Fair, Richardson described Dolly's poignant situation.
(32:36):
It was fascinating because he couldn't draw anymore. Richardson recalled
of Dolly his hands were too weak for him to
do the work. All he could do was sign his name.
His eyes had gone. To put Dolly in a good mood,
the staff would bring female models down to the basement,
have them undress, and tell them to roll around naked
(32:59):
on law pieces of rolling paper smeared with blue paint.
For one show, Dolly had the idea to do holograms
of his own work, but he hadn't made them yet.
Richardson explained, in order to do them, we had to
find some original dollies. So Roland and I went down
to the basement and we found a bunch of old
(33:20):
nineteen century sculpture of no great distinction. We got someone
to paint antlers on a loaf of bread and other
surrealist cliches, and this crap sold. Dolly's only contribution was
a huge signature, because that's all he could do anymore.
It was, in its way a kind of art world fraud,
(33:41):
except that the clay lumps and the blue painted paper
and the holograms were at least touched and blessed by
the artist, and buyers, foolish as they might be, more
or less new what they were buying. Coincidentally, it was
at a Salvador Dolly opening at the n Odler Gallery
in nineteen sixty eight where Philly Say first laid eyes
(34:03):
on Roland Dallet. As she recalls, it was love at
first sight. It was a Dolly opening. I was representing
Dolly at the time in the United States, and I
went with his manager and his wife and we went
to the gallery and as I walked in, I saw
this man at the end of the gallery and I
(34:25):
just thought to myself, my god, that's the man of
my life. I was married at the time you were married. Yes,
he was married with I don't know how many mistresses,
and there were thirty eight years between you. Yes, he
was so delightfully charming. This is European elegance like doesn't
(34:45):
exist anymore, didn't even really exist then. It was five
years later, in nineteen seventy three, when Philie Say was
arriving at Michael Hammer's gallery to meet a client for lunch.
When would bring the two back together this time for good.
I went to the gallery and we were up on
the second floor and the elevator opened and then off
(35:11):
the elevator came roll on and I was like, oh
my god, and I said, I've been in Paris for
three months. If I can't pull this off today, there's
something definitely wrong with me. At the end of lunch,
we got up and rolland came over to me and
he said, you know, I really enjoyed having lunch with you.
(35:33):
I find you charming, but I would like it if
we could have lunch just the two of us, would
you do that? And I said, just tell me when.
And we had lunch the next day and really practically
didn't separate from that moment on. With the sale of
Knodler to armand Hammer, Roland Ballet began organizing his exit.
(35:58):
He married Philie Say, she at twenty eight, he at
sixty six, and the two moved to Paris. They lived
like the newly weds. They were oblivious to their nearly
four decade age difference until armand Hammer disrupted their idol.
Hammer owed a third and final payment to Ballet to
(36:18):
complete his purchase of the Knoedler Gallery and simply refused
to make it. Roland was appalled. He never thought armand
Hammer would be so awful and such a crook, Pelisse
recalled later a judge had to intervene. We were in
Paris and we got this call from his lawyer that
Almand Hamma was going to be in New York in
(36:40):
two days and he wanted to settle it, and Roland,
if he really wanted to do, they should come to
New York. So we dropped everything and flew to New York.
Roland went to court and Hammah was there and the
thing was. He said, yes, you know all settlements. And
Roland said, I I have to go back to France
(37:00):
and I have things to do, and if you want
to settle it, I want a bank check for it
by the end of the day. Today Hammer gave the check.
By the end of the day, the bank check, and
we went back to Paris. Six of the art business.
(37:21):
Roland Ballet resigned as Noodler's director and settled in to
enjoy what would prove to be twenty five more years
of conjugal bliss with his young and adoring wife. He
owned one of the two buildings on East seventy Street,
number twenty one, which would eventually pass to Philly Say
and be sold by her in two thousand eleven for
(37:42):
fifteen and a half million dollars, but he rarely came
to the gallery anymore. So he almost certainly failed to
notice a nine year old salesperson who joined Nodler in
December nine. Her name was Ann Friedman, and her impact
on the gallery would be both profound and tragic. Over
(38:04):
many of its fifty plus years, the Knoler had been
a living, breathing presence, a character in the story of
twenty century art. Its fortunes had risen and sometimes dipped,
but its reputation remained intact, and the employees who chose
to work there for modest salaries were personally devoted to it.
(38:26):
They would find in Ann Freedman a very different kind
of gallerists, one much more focused on money that art.
Over a fourteen year period, Ann Friedman oversaw the selling
of more than sixty disputed paintings, reaping eighty million dollars
for the gallery, A trio of forgers and Freedman herself
(38:48):
to the shock and scorn of the entire contemporary art market.
She even managed to open a new gallery, Friedman Arts,
on the third floor of a town house on East
seventy third Street, next door to the chic Via Quadrono restaurant.
She goes up and down those stairs every day, a
free woman, but a shunned presence in this neighborhood of
(39:10):
world renowned dealers. We're coming back from Frank Stella's studio
and you got a call and now he's boiling. He
wants to kill her. That's next time on art fraud.
Come with me and you be, you know, world of
(39:32):
pure imagination Taco and you see into your imagination Art.
Fraud is brought to you by I Heart Radio and
(39:52):
Cavalry Audio. Our executive producers are Matt del Piano, Keegan Rosenberger,
myself and Michael s Ayerson. We're produced by Brandon Morgan
and Zach McNeice. Zack also edited and mixed this episode.
Lindsay Hoffman is our managing producer. Our writer is Michael Schneerson.
(40:15):
If you want to view Parahize, simply look around and
not ething you want want to change the world, There's nothing.
(40:47):
What's up, guys? I'm a Shop Bloud and I am
Troy Millions and we are the host of the Ernia
Leisure podcast when we break down business models and examine
the latest trans and finance. We hold court and have
exclusive interviews with some of the biggest names of business,
sporting and entertainment, from DJ Khaled to Mark Cuban, Rick
Ross and Shaquille O'Neil. I mean. Our alumni list is expansive.
Listen in as our guests reveal their business models, hardships
(41:08):
and triumphs and their respective fields. The knowledge is in
death and the questions are always delivered from your standpoint.
We want to know what you want to know. We
talked to the legends of business, sports, and entertainment about
how they got their start and most importantly, how they
make their money. Earn Your Leisia is a college business
class mixed with pop culture. I want to learn about
the real estate game, unclears, how the stock market works.
(41:28):
We got you interested in starting a truck and company
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on the Black Effect podcast Network, I Heart Radio, app,
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(41:50):
Roxanne Gay, the host of The Roxanne Gay Agenda, the
bad feminist podcast of Your Dreams. Each week, I talked
to an interesting person about feminine is, some race, writing
in books, and art, food, have culture, and yes, politics,
we can't escape politics. Listen to the Luminary original podcast,
The Rock Sand Gay Agenda every Tuesday on the I
(42:13):
Heart Radio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On the latest season of the Next Question with Katie
Correct podcast, Katie dives into Well Katie Here exclusive podcast
only conversations between Katie and the people who made her
memoir Going There possible. Katie is a pack rad and
(42:35):
she has basically her own archive of sorts in her basements. Plus,
Katie explores some of the big news stories she's covered
over the decades and the people behind them, like Anita Hill,
I thought I could just get back to my life,
and that was impossible. It was not going to be
the same. There's plenty of Katie's signature curiosity and no
(42:57):
holds barred interviews, along with some of her own and
revealing answers. We spent a lot of time together around
a dining room table here and in the city, and
you know, it was a very intense experience. All episodes
of Next Question with Katie Curic are available now. Listen
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(43:18):
you get your podcasts.
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